President Obama is having a bipartisan party at his house, while Vice President Biden is having only left-leaners at his place. What are your plans?

And who are you pulling for? The president, although he wishes the “long-suffering” Cardinals his best, is openly rooting for the Steelers. I guess that’s political payback for when Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney, a longtime Republican, endorsed him during the campaign.

For me, I always love underdogs, so I’ll be cheering for Kurt Warner and the Cardinals.

Has the pregame show started yet?

The curmudgeonly Jeremiah Moss, on his blog Vanishing New York, often complains that New York City is full of Young Urban Narcissists whom he nicknames “Yunnies”: “They have no empathy for others. They see people as interchangeable, one the same as another. They throw items of value away, believing they can always get more.” They are attracted to “disposability, easy access to objects of desire, and cloning in their environment.”

In a passage eloquent in both its optimism and its crankiness, the blogger asks if the recession is chasing away this “swaggering crowd of safety-seeking do-nothings” and making room for those President Obama called “the risk-takers, doers, and makers of things”:

Many of us are feeling optimistic about this city for the first time in a decade. . . . There is great hope that the narcissistic, sociopathic tenor of our entire country, the dark cloud we’ve been living under for the past 8 years, is poised to change. . . . And our city will be far better for it. We don’t need to tumble into violence and degradation. We can be safe, we can prosper, we can enjoy beautiful things—without living in a sociopathic New York.

The lines about the “narcissistic, sociopathic tenor of our entire country” and a “sociopathic New York” reminded me of a song I heard Andrew Bird sing at Carnegie Hall Wednesday.

Bird is a quirky indie rocker whose classical violin infuses his music—“one of the most distinctive and creative songwriters working today,” says New York Magazine. His songs are esoteric to the point of pretentious. One of my favorite lines on his latest album, Noble Beast, comes from the song “Tenuousness”: “From proto-Sanskrit Minoans to porto-centric Lisboans / Greek Cypriots and harbor sorts who hang around the ports a lot.” He ropes archaic and technical terms into rhythm and poetry.

Bird took off his shoes and played in his stocking feet on the Ronald O. Perelman stage, which still looked spacious even with the drums and the cluster of spinning gramophones that sent sound through the auditorium. His sock monkey sat on the stage behind him as he layered and looped the music to create the symphonic sounds that wrapped themselves around his erudite lyrics.

He sang “Oh No,” the first song from his latest album, and the lines echoed Moss: “It would take a calculated blow to the head / to light the eyes of all the harmless sociopaths.”

Bird explained this line months ago on the New York Times blog Measure for Measure: “What does it take to wake us up, we who feel so little? Aren’t we almost like sociopaths, only the kind that don’t kill people?” Sociopaths are people so callous to other people’s pain they almost seem to have no soul; and on some level, Bird is saying, we’re guilty of that callousness and consciencelessness, too. Maybe we don’t do others active harm, but our hearts are hardened “calcium mines buried deep in our chests.” Waking us up to compassion would take a hard blow to the head.

If Moss is right, the recession could be that “calculated blow” that dislodges the “calcium mines” in the hearts of the not-so-harmless sociopaths.

In late December, two women flew out of Austin, Texas, to begin a seven-week journey to some of the darkest corners of the Earth. Why? Their blog explains their quest in words and pictures:

Blanca Garcia and Liz Rivas believe the Lord has given each individual eyes to see and ears to hear that we might collectively act to relieve suffering, fight against injustice, and simply love both our neighbors in the U.S. and those living in other nations. However many Americans either cannot or will not visit places like Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Iraq to see and hear for themselves. These two women hope that by personally going to these countries and bringing back pictures and stories they might be used to bring the hurting and the needy from across the globe closer to those who can help meet those needs.

Yesterday, they flew from Delhi to Bangkok, and then traveled by car to Poipet, Cambodia, where they’ll meet with members of the Cambodian Hope Organisation. Blanca and Liz arrive back in Austin on Feb. 16. Follow their journey here.

Happy Super Bowl Eve!

In honor of tomorrow’s game, today’s quote is from a rakish former NFL player: “We’re going to win on Sunday. I guarantee it.”

At the funeral today for North Carolina State women’s basketball coach Kay Yow, it was apparent that she didn’t ask any of her famous friends or her family to speak on her behalf—because she did it herself. In a 25-minute videotaped message, Yow said to those gathered:

“And now I say farewell. And it’s been a wonderful journey, especially since the time I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. . . . It has changed my life. It has changed the life of every person who has accepted Him.”

“I have never known of a service like this,” Tennessee coach Pat Summitt said afterward. “And it would be just like Kay to be the absolute first.”

Yow died Saturday after a more than two-decade fight against breast cancer.

Democrat Charlie Wheelan is one of 14 candidates running for Rahm Emanuel’s vacated congressional seat in Illinois. In an effort to stand out in the crowd, the econ-prof-turned-politician will run this ad in Illinois during the Super Bowl:

Nothing makes me feel behind the times like a company announcing the 2.0 version of some new gadget before I’ve even tried the first iteration. That could be the case with the Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reading device. The Internet giant just invited members of the press to a mysterious media event, sparking rumors that it is set to release a new Kindle. If that’s true, the company is keeping under wraps any upgrade details, leaving tech prognosticators to speculate about what a Kindle 2.0 might feature.

Meanwhile, I have never even seen a Kindle. As a frequent flyer on Amazon, I confess I’m intrigued at the idea of having instant access to thousands of books and periodicals on a portable, handheld device.

OTOH, I’m old-fashioned about books and paper, and don’t particularly enjoy reading in electronic form. Whenever possible, I print things out and read them the old-school way. Something about glare and pixels bugs me, I think.

Have any of you tried Kindle? If so, do you recommend it?

[UPDATE: This post contains a correction. Amazon did invite members of the press to a media event, but did not announce a Kindle upgrade as I previously reported.]

It took six ballots and overcoming an incumbent candidate, but former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele ended up the last man standing as he was elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, becoming the first black to hold the top party position.

ADDENDUM: Emily Belz reports on the RNC vote from Washington, D.C.

Former evangelical leader Ted Haggard has reemerged from the shadows of disgrace. Two years removed from public allegations of drug use and homosexual trysts with a prostitute, the father of five hit the talk-show circuit this week to reiterate apologies and tell his story of repentance. The appearances on shows like Larry King Live coincided with Thursday’s premiere of an HBO documentary that follows Haggard as he struggled to rebuild his life and provide for his family in the wake of national scandal.

Accompanying Haggard’s return to the public spotlight are more revelations of homosexual activity—these from a former member of New Life Church, the Colorado Springs, Colo., congregation Haggard founded and pastored until his resignation in November 2006. Grant Haas, now 25, informed church leaders two years ago about his experience with Haggard, which allegedly included thousands of sexually explicit text messages and an incident in which the former pastor performed a sex act in front of Haas.

Haggard apologized to Haas in person two years ago, and the church agreed to pay out $179,000 in a settlement that included a confidentiality agreement. But Haas told a Colorado Springs television station that he believes it necessary to go public now to ensure that the community is fully informed before it welcomes Haggard back home. Haggard has released a statement acknowledging an inappropriate relationship with Haas and apologizing for it.

The new revelations cloud the message of Haggard’s reemergence, which otherwise might have emphasized the redemptive value of exposure. In an interview earlier this week on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Haggard’s wife and two oldest children expressed their commitment to keep the family together. Haggard’s college-age daughter Christy said the scandal took her father off a false pedestal: “I never had a dad I felt I could really relate to. And suddenly to see this vulnerable, honest man in front of me opened an opportunity for me to really know who my father really was for the first time.”

Haggard’s wife, Gayle, spoke with similar heartfelt sincerity in recounting her path through anger and pain to forgiveness and reconciliation: “It was never a question for me whether I was going to stay with Ted. . . . I had to make a choice to start with and that was my choice. I choose to forgive him, and I choose to love him.”

Such beauty and power of a family amid redemption has thus far fallen short of trumping the Haas revelations in headlines around the country. And media fascination with homosexuality has further obscured the story’s redemptive quality. In her interview, Winfrey repeatedly pressed Haggard to approve of homosexuality. The former head of the National Association of Evangelicals was less than clear at times in his statements on the matter, answering Winfrey’s pointblank question as to whether Christ accepts homosexuals with the ambiguous: “I believe Christ accepts everybody.”

Gayle Haggard proved far less ambiguous, arguing that a person’s inclinations need not necessarily define who they are. Winfrey immediately objected: “I’m not going there with you, Gayle.”

To his credit, Haggard did clearly articulate a gospel of grace at numerous times throughout the interview, even admitting he’d never really understood it before: “When I was at my lowest point, when I couldn’t pray, I couldn’t read the Scriptures, I couldn’t seek Him anymore, He came after me and the Scripture came alive to me, Oprah, for the first time in a dramatic way. Jesus came for the unrighteous, not the righteous. And I qualify.”

Tragically, many onlookers may miss that message in the sea of scandal still swirling.